Android App Review: Hackers Handbook

In our first of many Android App reviews, we cover a paid application that gives you all of the tips and tricks for hacking many types of things.

Many people consider the Android platform to be one of mostly free apps. Today we will be reviewing a paid app on the Android market in order to tell you whether or not it’s worth buying as well as give you some detailed information about the app and what it enables you to do.

User InterfaceThe Hackers Handbook published by black hatter is a ‘hacking’ application that gives you detailed step by step instructions on how to accomplish a whole host of things in the tech world. It currently is for sale at the Android Market for $6.99. The developer, Black Hatter, is extremely explicit in his app’s description that the app is for ‘educational purposes’ and does not perform any hacks but rather explains how they are accomplished step by step.

Upon opening up this application you are greeted with a fairly simple black and white front page with an ‘Anonymous’ logo as well as a list of different types of hacking that this application details. In this case, the categories include Protect Yourself, Hacking WiFi, Hacking Accounts, Hacking Computers, Hacking Websites and Misc. Hacks. Upon clicking any of these, you are told that the application needs to download the menus in order to cache them in the future so that you don’t have to download parts of the app that you don’t use and not re-download ones you frequently view or use. This is a nice feature, but there should be an option when installing the application to enable ‘download all’ right from the get-go instead of downloading as you go along.

What’s hidden beneath the surface?The first and foremost part of this application covers actually protecting yourself against hacks rather than the actual hacking. The topics covered in this section are Password Security, WiFi Security, Virus checks, using proxies, browsing anonymously, and clearing system logs. For someone not well versed in the world of security, a lot of these little things can go a long way to prevent things like identity theft on the internet and most of that comes from being pre-emptive and protecting yourself in relatively simple ways which are detailed here.

The next category, Hacking Accounts covers Cracking Accounts, Hacking E-mail and Facebook/Twitter/YouTube, etc. These are all methods of gaining account access on multiple social network websites. These are achieved by various methods ranging from using a regular PC computer all the way to using an Android phone with a special Android app.

In the Hacking Computers section there are some methods of hacking computers using FUD Crypter, MetaSploit and Meterpreter commands. Most of these methods require some understanding of how to enter commands into certain programs (like backtrack 5) and other tools already mentioned in this guide. They are still extremely detailed and go step by step on how to accomplish these things regardless of how complicated they may be.

The Hacking Websites part of the app informs you of SQL Injections, Google dorks and ISS Exploits. Most of these methods give explanations of how these are accomplished as well as examples of SQL injections that have been successful in the past (like the Sony hack). Looking at some of these instructions makes us believe that it would be really nice to be able to email to oneself specific parts of the application in order for parts of the code to be saved, but that could also result in pirating of the app which is possibly why it is not an option.

There are also options to give feedback, share the app with your friends (via email) and send feedback to the developer if you have any suggestions, problems or corrections.

ConclusionOverall, this application is actually pretty detailed and very thorough in its methodologies. We do wish there were ways to save some parts of the code instead of having to read it from our phone as well as the option to download everything at once instead of bit by bit because if a user wishes to download everything at once, it should actually improve the app’s first time use performance. While we’re not quite sure that $7 is the right price for this application, it definitely presents quite a bit of valuable information in a fairly neat and organized manner and it definitely justifies some form of payment.